Etherium creator Vitalik Buterin could have made billions of dollars on the Shiba Inu token. But he didn’t
In mid-May, Vitalik Buterin conducted a Shiba Inu (SHIB) token burn, which infuriated some investors. The creator of Etherium had a lot of so-called “dog coins” – those projects that are similar in theme to the Dogecoin promoted by Ilon Musk at the beginning of the year. During that month, SHIB’s price surged and quickly reached a new all-time high. If Buterin had kept the coins, he would now have more than $32.5 billion in his account. We tell you more about what’s going on.
As is traditional, let’s start with an explanation. Shiba Inu has become one of the most popular tokens in 2021 as it has shown incredible growth. Specifically, the SHIB coin increased in value by 156 percent in the last week, which helped it surpass Dogecoin in terms of market capitalization and rank ninth in the overall coin ranking.
Overall cryptocurrency ranking
That said, the cryptocurrency’s long-term performance is even more surprising. Specifically, SHIB is up 910 percent in one month and 89 million percent in one year.
Shiba Inu cryptocurrency price performance
As a result, the coins leaked by Vitalik Buterin in May 2021 are now worth many times more. Here are the details.
How do you make money from cryptocurrencies?
As a reminder, initially after the project was created, the developers of Shiba Inu sent half of the coins in circulation to Vitalik Buterin, hoping to advertise and promote the altcoin. At the time, his wallet had accumulated 505 trillion SHIB, or approximately $8 billion as of early May this year.
Much of Shiba Inu's rapid growth this year depended on listings on major cryptocurrency exchanges. Among them was Coinbase, the largest trading platform for digital assets in the US. More recently, it has begun to gain traction again among Americans, with the exchange's app coming in at number one in the region in terms of downloads, surpassing TikTok.
Coinbase app in first place
Later that month, Vitalik donated 50 trillion SHIB to the then $1.2 billion COVID-19 fund in India. Buterin “burned” 90 percent of the remaining coins in his wallet, meaning he sent them to an address that no one else has access to. In fact, this event led to a sharp drop in the price of SHIB and a big loss for some investors in the project.
As a reminder, Buterin took it upon himself to merge tokens on decentralized exchanges and did it in large batches. As a result, the cryptocurrency rate went down sharply, causing panic in other cryptocurrency investors.
Vitalik Buterin’s sinking of “dog” tokens on decentralised exchanges
The money went to the India Covid-Crypto Relief Fund, which is fighting the spread and effects of the coronavirus in India. It is about 500 ETH worth $1.95 million at that exchange rate and SHIB tokens worth $946 million. Accordingly, the cryptocurrency has benefited.
Translation by Vitalik Buterin
However, the notional loss for Vitalik himself during this time on paper is enormous: had he kept the altcoin in his wallet, he would be at least $32.5 billion richer by today. However, Buterin has already stated that he prefers to donate crypto to charity and not have “too much power and influence” over the cryptocurrency community in his hands.
Shiba Inu’s growth over time
Shiba Inu continues to rise so far, with its all-time high being recorded yesterday. As we noted, the day before the coin even overtook its "progenitor" Dogecoin in terms of capitalization, taking ninth place in the cryptocurrency ranking. However, not everyone likes the mass frenzy around SHIB - many crypto-experts believe that the sharp growth of the altcoin takes liquidity away from other projects, which could lead to another major market decline.
Note that some investors did not repeat Vitalik’s actions and dumped SHIB’s coin stock too early. The real sensation this week was the owner of this address, who invested about $8,000 in SHIB in August 2020 and has been holding them ever since. The funny thing is that this amount is now valued at billions of dollars, but the user is in no hurry to drain it.
The volume of the cryptocurrency investor’s holdings
We believe that this story once again highlights the uniqueness of the cryptocurrency sphere. Anything can happen here - including making billions from a few thousand dollars. We want to believe that the increased attention to dog tokens won't make investors forget about Bitcoin, and that the bull run will continue.
What do you think about this? Share your opinion in our millionaires cryptochat. There we will discuss other important developments affecting the blockchain and decentralisation industry.
Related posts
